5 ms·

FYI, a network with 1000x more on-chain transactions, that everyone uses, is much more difficult to censor, than one that requires bank-like organisation with I

FYI, a network with 1000x more on-chain transactions, that everyone uses, is much more difficult to censor, than one that requires bank-like organisation with IOUs to the main chain.

vertex-four 9y ago
I am unaware of any current proposal which requires putting in place a bank-like organisation. If you're talking about Lightning Network: routing things across a network without requiring a central controller is a very well-studied field.
- mhluongo 9y ago
  Lightning's network topology is still up in the air. Saying "routing is well studied" is well and good, but from what I've read doing it with payment channels without devolving to hub and spoke isn't trivial.
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    I would argue that that is mostly because cryptocurrency developers are mostly incapable of reading CS papers, but that's neither here nor there.
    - mhluongo 9y ago
      I'm sure your input would be welcome :) There have been a couple posts recently debating different network configurations [0]. It seems like the difference between Lightning's routing and other networks is that channels need re-balancing, but I don't know the literature well enough to know if there's an existing, well-studied analog. [0] https://hackernoon.com/simulating-a-decentralized-lightning-network-with-10-million-users-9a8b5930fa7a https://hackernoon.com/simulating-a-decentralized-lightning-...
hudon 9y ago
Two problems with your argument: 1- You imply that only one camp wants to scale. Actually, both camps want to scale. The only difference is that the "big blocks" camp do not think a user's ability to validate the blockchain is worth keeping. 2- The size of the network is irrelevant to the government's ability to censor transactions. The only thing that stops them from having power over the network is decentralization. If you as a user have no say whatsoever in what goes into blocks, you are forfeiting your power and handing it over to the miners. Then, the miners become transaction validators that can be compelled to censor certain kinds of transactions by their government. As a user, you will have no means to stop this because you can't even validate the chain they are producing (because it costs you too much to transmit, store and validate it in computing resources). I'm not saying the argument for the "not-big-blocks" camp is to never increase the block size, but it is to try everything they can to keep the power in the user's hands while growing the network. The minute you give up on decentralization for the purpose of scale, Bitcoin loses its value proposition as it looks less like digital cash and more like paypal with central transaction validators and a central database.
- olegkikin 9y ago
  > the miners become transaction validators that can be compelled to censor certain kinds of transactions by their government That's only true if 1) >50% of the miners are in said county (currently China) 2) >50% of the miners agree to this censorship 3) They actually know the meaning of transactions in order to filter them. Most transactions are anonymous, even the big ones. We know identities of a tiny percentage of the addresses, and most of them are not hiding. For instance, we can't figure out where Mt Gox money went - I've seen some attempts of tracing them, but it went nowhere.
- stale2002 9y ago
  "You imply that only one camp wants to scale." No. Go read what official Core developers like Luke-jr and Blue Hair Matt are saying. They think that the blocksize might ALREADY be too large, and actually want to DECREASE the blocksize. They also explicitly do not want to scale, because that would mean that transaction prices go down. They literally want block fees to be high so as to create a "fee market".

FYI, a network with 1000x more on-chain transactions, that everyone uses, is much more difficult to censor, than one that requires bank-like organisation with IOUs to the main chain.

vertex-four 9y ago

I am unaware of any current proposal which requires putting in place a bank-like organisation. If you're talking about Lightning Network: routing things across a network without requiring a central controller is a very well-studied field.

mhluongo 9y ago
Lightning's network topology is still up in the air. Saying "routing is well studied" is well and good, but from what I've read doing it with payment channels without devolving to hub and spoke isn't trivial.
- vertex-four 9y ago
  I would argue that that is mostly because cryptocurrency developers are mostly incapable of reading CS papers, but that's neither here nor there.
  - mhluongo 9y ago
    I'm sure your input would be welcome :) There have been a couple posts recently debating different network configurations [0]. It seems like the difference between Lightning's routing and other networks is that channels need re-balancing, but I don't know the literature well enough to know if there's an existing, well-studied analog. [0] https://hackernoon.com/simulating-a-decentralized-lightning-network-with-10-million-users-9a8b5930fa7a https://hackernoon.com/simulating-a-decentralized-lightning-...

hudon 9y ago

Two problems with your argument: 1- You imply that only one camp wants to scale. Actually, both camps want to scale. The only difference is that the "big blocks" camp do not think a user's ability to validate the blockchain is worth keeping. 2- The size of the network is irrelevant to the government's ability to censor transactions. The only thing that stops them from having power over the network is decentralization. If you as a user have no say whatsoever in what goes into blocks, you are forfeiting your power and handing it over to the miners. Then, the miners become transaction validators that can be compelled to censor certain kinds of transactions by their government. As a user, you will have no means to stop this because you can't even validate the chain they are producing (because it costs you too much to transmit, store and validate it in computing resources). I'm not saying the argument for the "not-big-blocks" camp is to never increase the block size, but it is to try everything they can to keep the power in the user's hands while growing the network. The minute you give up on decentralization for the purpose of scale, Bitcoin loses its value proposition as it looks less like digital cash and more like paypal with central transaction validators and a central database.

olegkikin 9y ago
> the miners become transaction validators that can be compelled to censor certain kinds of transactions by their government That's only true if 1) >50% of the miners are in said county (currently China) 2) >50% of the miners agree to this censorship 3) They actually know the meaning of transactions in order to filter them. Most transactions are anonymous, even the big ones. We know identities of a tiny percentage of the addresses, and most of them are not hiding. For instance, we can't figure out where Mt Gox money went - I've seen some attempts of tracing them, but it went nowhere.
stale2002 9y ago
"You imply that only one camp wants to scale." No. Go read what official Core developers like Luke-jr and Blue Hair Matt are saying. They think that the blocksize might ALREADY be too large, and actually want to DECREASE the blocksize. They also explicitly do not want to scale, because that would mean that transaction prices go down. They literally want block fees to be high so as to create a "fee market".